Grantaire Drinks From Prouvaire's Bottle
by caudelac
Summary: Implied slash. Grantaire writes poetry, and nearly blows it. Prouvaire covers for him. Enjolras is bemused.
1. Preliminary Gaiety

**The day Grantaire drank from Prouvaire's bottle**

**Part 1**

Grantaire strode somehow steadily across the café and snatched the verse Jean Prouvaire was reading to some of the other Amis from his hand.  


"What's this pretty posey Jehan? Something new to impress your dainty dears? Let's see," Squinting at the lines he was able to make out a few, and so orated them loudly, "_Do you remember our sweet life/When we were so young, we two..._" He interrupted himself with a loud burp. 

Jehan looked up at him plesantly. "We've read that part Capital-R, skip to the bit about Plato." 

Grantaire laughed loudly and tossed the page back at the poet, "Oh Jehan, enough with your flowers and pretty girls all rhymed up one line with the other. Or better still, here- hand me a pen, and I'll have a go at some of these ladies who only live for a summer night of sweetly spoken words and the chance to share a line or two with you. Aha!" He erupted satisfactorily, "I have already begun!" And, sitting down at the table with Jehan and the others, he began to scribble furiously with the former's pen, on a piece of paper borrowed from his next neighbor, Joly.  


While Grantaire mumbled, cursed, and wrote, Jehan quietly finished his love poem, (met with an accolade by his audience that R. paid no attention to) and waited good-naturedly for the fledgling rhymester to finish his opus, remarking casually to Feuilly, "This should be interesting." 

Feuilly, eying Grantaire warily replied, "To say the very least about it." and laughed, joined by the others, which made Grantaire scowl but not look up. 

Finally he finished, and with a satisfied "Voila!" rose, planting a foot on his chair and the other on the floor.  


"Now," He began, commanding silence with a fierce twinkle in his bloodshot eye, "Which grissette, one may wonder, will have been the subject of my first piece? Which indeed! I must apologise to those mademoiselles I have slighted in this topic- for I have chosen to make my virgin dalliance in the bed of poetry with none other than that much haggled over baggage, Helen, late of Troy. Ah, Menelaus, forgive me! Paris, the scoundrel, gets no consideration, for he deserves none." And with that charming introduction, Grantaire launched headlong into the fruits of his vine-inspired labour.

_"Helen, Late of Troy- by R._

"Ah, thou whom the Gods have blest  
With charms to cause an emuté spanning seas,  
Should thy face be just as fair as Marlowe said  
Thy face alone shall never yet launch me.

"Let me look at you- and tell me plainly,  
Trojan Harlot, fallen woman thou,  
What words you spake that laid Fell Hector out,  
What did you say to Bring Achilles low?

"No words at all! Just for thy pretty face,  
That not so pretty in the morning be  
When swords are flashing; Paris what a fool!  
Stay but one night, then send her on to me,

"Then tarry with me Helen, just one day;  
And then to thy husband go thou on thy way,  
Daanan Doxy, I will soon send thee packing;  
That our brave warriors's lives shall not be lacking.

"And the same goes for Breisis." He added, landing again in his chair with an air of satisfaction while the others looked around at each other in wonder. Bahorel finally broke the stunned stillness with a rauccous laugh.   


"Pretty!" He exclaimed, slapping his thigh, "That's telling her!" And he laughed again, this time joined by the group, save for Jehan, who was somewhat scandalized by R.'s treatment of Aphrodite's disciple. Grantaire broke through the laughter with noise of his own,  


"But wait my friends; there is more where that came from, if you will grant me a moment." And he filched another feiulle, this time from Feuilly.  


"What now?" Asked Bahorel with humor in his eye ,"Going to bring Aphrodite down to your level? Will you slander Psyche, or change Cassandra's fortune?" Jehan looked wan at the Idea, but Grantaire laughed.  


"No, no, I'm done with grissettes for the day; now I shall rhapsodize on something just as easy to get, but infinately less trouble and infinately more pleasant..."

* * *

_Note: the poem that Prouvaire is reading in the beginning is on page 1105 of the Signet Classic translation, in Ch VI of book 12: Corinth, entitled, "While Waiting"._


	2. Continued Gaiety

**Part 2**

After a short time scribbling, the noveau poet was prepared to exhibit his second offering. 

He cleared his throat importantly and announced, "Ode to a Grape, by France's foremost authority on the subject..."

"Here here!" Cried Bossuet and Bahorel. 

Grantaire shot them a good-natured glare, "I begin again, ahem." He looked around to make sure all at the table were paying attention, and started.

"Ode to a Grape, 

_"Oh thou sacred sphere late of the vine!  
Come hither with thy brothers, hither,  
Distill thou swiftly of thy precious liquor,  
And ferment into pleasant, tasty wine!_

"My dainty dear! Oh come girl, to my lap  
Dally with me while I now drain my glass,  
Your little charms, while hardly unsurpassed,  
Will seem Hellenic to me, once I've drained this sap..." 

"And we all know what he thinks of Helen," Interjected Bahorel, which drew laughter from the table and another glare from R.  
"Quiet you!" He snapped, cleared his throat, and continued.

"_Oh firebrand! Roar on! Within my ears  
Absinthe-amplified, your words like rocks  
Or crushed ice rumble, burrow like a fox  
And are locked for years._

"Oh sun! Stir me not whence I have fallen!  
"Moved by this good fruit to such repose;  
Dull days and nights- I've quite enough of those,  
Night- when thirst is silent, Day- when drink is calling."

This offering made even more of a sensation that the first, and was met with uproarious laughter from all quarters. Jehan, not entirely recovered from the barb at the Daanan Princess, merely commented blithely on the unorthodox rhyme scheme and admitted, "Overall, not bad." 


	3. The Love Song of R. Alfred Drunkard.

**Part III**

"Jehan! Why did you not tell me of the ease with which one might become a rhymester? What a medium! A blessing on all poets! A toast!" And R. raised his glass with a wobbly bow to Prouvaire, who modestly drank.

"But wait there, Capital R." Said Bahorel after he'd toasted heartily, "I've a bone to pick with you. I thought you said you were through with grissettes, eh? Yet you dragged poor Helen back for more in that last, and with another baggage in your lap! Now what's that, then?" To which the others all laughed and agreed. 

Grantaire frowned for a moment, then laughed himself. "Fine then! I promise, for my next act, no grisettes at all. As a matter of fact, should mam'zelle come within a foot of my intended topic, she'd likely turn to stone. Alors..." And he waved away the paper that Feiully offered up, preferring to elocute wildly off the top of his head. 

"On our fearless Leader," Began R, an announcement that was met with much enthusiasm by the assembled.

Enjolras, who, hiterto had been paying only surface attention to the fracas, suddenly looked up at him from his maps with something contemptious in his eye. "Ah, yes." He muttered to himself, "One should have expected as much, that drunken lout." And he sat back to listen. Grantaire cleared his throat and began again.

"_On our Fearless Leader:_

"A free-verse tribute,  
By our Fearless drunkard."

More Applause from the company was met by a shrewd nod from Enjolras ("At least he got that part right."), hysterical table-pounding from Bahorel, ("Hear Hear!") and a nasty glare from Grantaire, who did not bother to repeat himself again, but merely continued when order was restored.

"_Blond Enjolras, marble angel,  
Whose face would cause a riot in a convent,  
Whose voice will cause an emeuté in the streets,  
How did this pure and pristine ivory pillar,  
Come to recruit just such a one as me?_

"I, who have so often sneered  
At Marat from behind a cloak of absinthe, at dead Danton  
Laughed, as at Dead Napoleon; so by what force  
Do I still listen on?

Well-- Look at his eye! Pale blue-- mind-- not that sweet- blue-of-the-sky,  
But the ice-blue glint of steel hiding in the bachelor's buttons,  
Which are another of his badges--  
For our Saint would never dally with such baggage..."

"Hear Hear!" Cried Bahorel heartily, once more.

"Silence Bahorel!" Chided Courfeyrac, "Are you on the outs with your mistress that you've interrupted Grantaire's tribute once more? Peace!" 

Bahorel looked abashed at this, and the other Amis joined in with light-hearted ribbing. 

To Grantaire, Courfeyrac said, "Continue Capital R., you're doing marvellously. Isn't he, Enjolras?"

The laughing, nodding heads swiveled and parted like a curtain to reveal the adressed statue, who nodded shortly, his face bearing no expression whatever but a slightly curled lip. His elbows rested on the arms of his chair, his hands steepled before him, and he waved one absently.

"It's your flag, wine-cask, let's see you fly it." He remarked in just as absent a tone. 

Thusly encouraged, Grantaire went on:

_"And he'll go not near the tavern! Nay!  
Our lord is temperate; he scorns my darling wine;  
The drinker of the wine, and the wine's cask--   
To Enjolras! A Toast! Ah: I drain my flask!"_

And he did so, with great abandon, as did many others, with laughs and winks. Enjolras, predictably, did not drink.

"_ Shall I, despised, be lit, though I should damp the match?  
Do I dare to sip, and sit, and see,  
If one more word or one more emptied cup  
Shall move this cask to stand and die with thee?_

"I cannot say! O Firebrand, O Fury,  
O Son of France in all her righteous Glory-   
What is it makes this son of Be'lal follow you?  
I wish I knew..."

And he broke off, his expression suddenly troubled. He shook his head, frowning, and muttered slowly, 

"By God, I wish I knew."

Several interesting things occurred during and after the last two verses. These centered around the sudden introduction of a remarkable tone in R's speech, of which he himself was not aware. In fact, of those present, only three took any note of it at all. 

The first was Marius Pontmercy, who had been paying little enough attention to the spectacle, his thoughts on fairer things. It was this sudden tone that caught his attention. Being that it echoed the very tone of his thoughts, he fancied that, perhaps, he had spoken them aloud by mistake. But he quickly discerned that a poetry reading was in the offing and dismissed that notion, returning to his reverie without giving the matter another thought.

The second was Enjolras himself, who suddenly pulled his boots from the chair they rested opon and sat instantly upright. His eye fixed on Grantaire's curious expression towards the end of the next-to-the-last verse, he eased himself back halfway, shaking his head in self-chiding disbelief. No, he must have made a mistake... but then he caught Grantaire's eye and held it for an instant, and there had been no mistake. It was this momentary connection that made Grantaire suddenly aware of himself, and made him cast down his eyes on the last line in a terrible, embarrassed confusion. Enjolras, for his part, leaned back the rest of the way, put his boots back on their rest, and said nothing.

The third, ostensibly, was Jean Prouvaire. He watched Grantaire carefully and, alone of all les Amis, he saw the moment flash; revelation and rejection. On hearing those last, gentle words, he was moved to a deep and profound sympathy for the poor, slighted drunkard. He pitied R. now as he would a desperate woman. Being now a comerade both in the sense of the Amis and as a fellow poet, the latter having just accidentally exposed his soul in the form of a couplet before the uncomprehending (and too-well comprehending) former, he covered for him quickly.

"Bravo!" Shouted Jehan, just as the last line was spoken, "Bravaura! Splendid!" He applauded loudly, and the other Amis joined in whole-heartedly, pounding the table and stomping their boots with unabashed enthusiasm. They had missed entire the nakedness of R. and the reaction of Enjolras. The latter was however obscure to even the most careful observer; he clapped quietly with the others, but his eyes did not smile.

Grantaire, for his part, avoided looking at Enjolras completely. If he was unaware of the kindness payed him by Jean Prouvaire, he was horridly and embarrassingly conscious of just how exposed he had been. Nevertheless, or perhaps fueled by this embarrassment, he soaked up the applause, bowing exaggeratedly in his fondness for spectacle.

"Stunning! And accurate too!" Bahorel rached over and slapped Enjolras on the back good naturedly. "That's you down to the teeth, eh Enjolras? Why, he's got you pegged!" Enjolras made no comment but a nod to this, and returned to his maps and a book of Rosseau. R. had been trying so hard not to notice that this was all he saw, and it caused him to sigh inwardly. But on the jocular surface there appeared not a crack.

"Come, another!" Cried Feuilly, who was enjoying this immensely, "Par dieu Jehan, he'll give you a run for your money yet!" 

Grantaire shook his head. "No, no more pretty posey from me today. Jehan, the wine in your bottle is sweet, but exhausting-- you may have it back. I'll stick to my habitual poison, merci." And downed he his bottle of absinthe in a gulp and a sea of laughter.

That was the end of Monsieur Grantaire's rhyme.


End file.
